bus--mastering-design-thinking

Module 0
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Innovation needs to be
- Desirable (people)
- Feasible (tech)
- Viable (business)
- (And Sustainable)

Put simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. 

Prototypes should command only as much time, effort, and investment as are needed to generate useful feedback and evolve an idea.		

A Design Thinker’s Personality Profile
- Empathy
- Integrative Thinking
- Experimentalism 
- Collaboration
- Optimism

Design projects must ultimately pass through three spaces 
- Inspiration
- Ideation
- Implementation

Successful product/service should appeal to us emotionally and functionally

How to Make Design Thinking Part of Innovation Drill
- Begin at the beginning (involve design thinking from the start)
- Take a human-centered approach
- Try early and oftern
- Seek outside help 
- Blend big and small projects 
- Budget to the pace of innovation 
- Find talent any way you can 
- Design for the cycle

Design Thinking is just an approach to Innovation 

Set of principles known as design thinking 
- Empathy with users 
- a discipline of prototyping 
- Tolerance for failure 

Design Centric Culture 
- Focus on users' experiences, especially their emotional ones 
- Create models to examine complex problems (problem space)
- User prototypes to explore potential solutions (solution space)
- Tolerate Failure 
- Exhibit thoughtful restraint (know what not to do)

Challenges in building design centric organization 
- Accepting more ambiguity
- Embracing risk 
- Resetting expectations 

Module 1
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Random Notes
 
 
Innovation/Design process Steps
* Exploration Process
    * Research Existing Products and try and see them from users' point of view
        * User Research (Observation + Interviews)
            * Meeting with people - Talk, Interview, Observe and empathize
            * Try to get into their world and see it from their eyes
            * Connect with people at emotional level, you are trying to serve
        * Talk to different people in the ecosystem 
    * Research the reviews you got
        * Identify patterns in what you observed
    * Define Personas + Journey Map
    * Establish Emotional + Functional Requirements
    * By doing the above they identified the opportunity and reframed it
* Creation Process
    * Concept Generation
        * Brainstorming
            * By grouping ideas into common themes patterns emerge and concepts develop
            * Collaboration and flat hierarchy enables everyone to contribute their ideas
        * Individual Concept Generation
            * Focused exploration 
            * Individual deep thinking
        * Prototyping
        * Multi-voting
        * User Feedback
            * Resonance Testing
            * Important to understand where users see real value
            * Intent is to test and learn so that ideas can be improved
        * Identity Key Attributes
        * Design Refinement
            * Test feasibility of the ideas
            * PoC
        * Design Review 
            * Designs are tested with users for desirability 
            * Feasibility is checked by engineers through analysis and prototyping 
            * Viability - Analysis of Cost (engineering, tooling, production etc) and estimates of revenue from product, sales and services .. Come up with a business model 
        * Viability Review 
        * Alpha Prototype
        * Final review 
        * Customer review
        * Internal review
		•	 
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Exploration Process Summary
-----------------------------------------
 
-Techniques used in Exploration Phase 
* Project Kickoff (details in summary slide)
* Field Research  (details in summary slide)
-Learnings from Customer Need Analysis
* Known Needs
* Unfulfilled Needs
* Latent needs
 
Creation Process Summary
-----------------------------------------
-Techniques used in Exploration Phase 
* Brainstorming
    * Rule is to Defer judgement
* Down Selection
    * Open Multi-Voting
* Modelling/Prototyping
    * Prototyping
    * Testing 
 
Culture for innovation
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* Teams are interdisciplinary
* Ad-hoc created for a project 
* Leadership skills required 
    * Process skills
    * People skills 
* Culture of Altitude
    * Artefacts 
        * Team 
    * Values
        * Inclusive nature of the process
        * Ability to try things and iterate
 
Systematic Innovation Process
It’s a three phase process 
 
 
 
Individual Assignment 1.1
1. What techniques did Altitude use to complete the explore phase?
Designers at Altitude started with trying to understand the problem better. For that they followed the following steps
* They started with a discussion among themselves and identified the questions they would like to answer to understand the problem better. 
* Then they went on to research the existing products and how the users are using them with the objective to understand their pain in usage of those products. This research included meeting with people, conducting interviews and also observing them use the product. The intent was to try to step in the users' shoes and understand the problem from their perspective.
* Once they had all the data, they tried to see if there were some patterns in the information they gathered in an attempt to identify common themes.
 
2. Why did those techniques work so well for Altitude?
In my opinion, the reasons why these techniques worked are
* They started with no assumptions and tried to challenge the existing ones
* In the process, they talked to different stakeholders, hence understanding the problem holistically
* In addition to talking to people, they spent time in observing them as well which helped them identity things which sometimes users themselves don't realize
* They showed empathy and really tried to connect with the users at an emotional level
 
3. What did the team learn while they were exploring the problem space?
From the above process they could answer the following question:
* Who are the users? (User Personas)
*  How they use the product and interact with the ecosystem? (Journey Maps)
* What are their emotional and functional requirements?
* What are the requirements which are not met by the current products? (Opportunity)
 
 
Individual Assignment 1.2
1. What techniques did Altitude use to create solutions?
 
Altitude used the following steps/techniques in process of creating the solution. At different stages, the following steps resulted in a different output depending on the context but the process remained the same. 
* Brainstorming: This includes discussing and collaborating with other colleagues to come up with the ideas to solve the problem at hand. At initial phases, it could mean coming up with ideas for initial prototype. Later on this could mean coming up with ideas for refinement of ideas.
* Concept Generation: This includes thinking about the ideas generated during brainstorming in depth, understanding the  common concepts among the ideas and coming up with key attributes of the solution that needs to be built
* Prototyping: Next phase is to build prototypes/proof of concepts to bring those ideas to life, make those more tangible and build something which can be tested with users and feedback can be gathered from them and other stakeholders.
* Testing + Feedback collection: The next phase is to take the prototype in hands of the colleagues/users/stakeholders and get their feedback on the same. Some of the techniques used in this phase are
    * Multi-voting
    * Resonance Testing
    * Customer Review
    * Design Review
    * Viability Review
* Iteration: Based on the feedback from users, engineering team and business team; they identify the list of problems to be solved for the next iteration and then go through the whole cycle again.
 
* How did the team at Altitude execute brainstorming, modelling, prototyping, and iterations?
 
Altitude team did all the above by building good culture in the organization which facilitates innovation. They have flat hierarchy so that everyone feels that their ideas are valuable. In addition to facilitate collaboration, they allow for the employees to spend individual time to do deep thinking about the solution. They also have the process in place to get through these steps in an efficient manner. 
 
* Why did those techniques work so well for Altitude?
 
In my opinion, these techniques work well for them because 
* They have the right organization structure and culture to execute different techniques
* They have the process in place which facilitates quick prototyping and continuous feedback so that the iterations are quick and not that costly making many iterations possible and hence resulting in a better product.
 
 
Individual Assignment 1.3
1. How did the team formation happen at Altitude?
The things I could gather around team formation are:
* They are formed around a problem statement with a purpose of designing a solution
* The structure within the team is non-hierarchical giving everyone the feeling that their inputs are valuable
 
2. How did the team work together?
The team worked together in a structured yet open, free-for-all manner which enabled them to come up with ideas with freedom. Also, they worked in a collaborative manner where everyone was building on the ideas provided by someone. It seems that they understand that it's not about who's right or wrong but a great product which is output of a good team. They also looked energetic, passionate about solving the problem in a creative manner.
3. What does it take to lead a creative team?
In my opinion, it takes a lot of things to lead a creative team some of which are:
1. Have a core belief that everyone is creative in their own regard and everyone has the ability to solve the problem in their own unique way
2. Leader of the team needs to think himself/herself as just an enabler and not the source of the solution, someone who needs to channelize the ideas.
3. Have ability to take risks and be comfortable with failures because with innovation, failure is inevitable
4. Have belief that things can be better and care enough to make them better
 
4. What is the design thinking culture at Altitude?
Altitude has tried to build a culture for innovation where everyone's opinion matters. People collaborate with each other to come up with a solution.  People are not afraid of taking up something new. They are ok with failing and iterating. Most important part is that they seem to have a process for doing this over and over again.


Module 2
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Latent needs examples:
* Apples chargers - for tripping problem
* Swiffer - cleaning the brooms is difficult
* Tetra Pack - punching a hole for smooth flow of fluid
* Door locks when the hands are full
* Virgin Galactic - space travel 
Understanding Customer needs (For sales)
* Business goals
* Decision Criteria 
* Personal Goals
 
 
Three Common Interview mistakes 
* Don't ask about your idea directly 
* Don’t ask leading questions
* Don't go a mile wide and inch deep (it’s a conversation so don't have a million questions lined up)
 
 
Find an example of an innovative product in your home or office environment or just anywhere. Explain why you chose the product, the needs it addresses, and what makes it innovative. Also, upload a photo of the product on Canvas for others to see.
 
I choose “Pull Out Kitchen Faucet” as an example for innovation. 
 
The needs it addresses: 
A) Cleaning the kitchen sink corners and sides without touching
B) Washing vegetables/fruits is simpler 
 
I am choosing this as an innovation because when I think of the world when it was not there, user’s wouldn’t have realized that this is what they need. Someone must have followed the process that we are learning here to identify these extra needs and come up with this design. It wouldn’t have been an obvious problem to solve.
 
Consider the examples provided in video 2-9 and come up with an example of your own. Choose a product or service and explain how it addresses a need that competing products and services did not.
 
For this assignment, I choose a mobile application called "Clarity Money". It's an app to keep track of ones spending and helps in planning the budget better. The competing products (at least the ones which I used) 
 for this segments are the apps provided by banks themselves for example Citi Bank app, Bank of America app. They also provide summarized information about spending.
 
The needs which this app meets that are not met by others are the following
* It has provision to link to multiple bank accounts and credit cards. As a user, I just need to go to one place to get insights into all my spending which is really useful because going to multiple apps and consolidating that information on an on-going basis is really difficult. 
* Even within a single app there is one important question these apps don’t answer is how much I spent on a particular vendor For e.g. Amazon, Safeway, Costco. So if for someone like me who wants to get a sense on how much I am spending on Costco vs Safeway, it is a lot of hard work. 
* This app also automatically detects all subscriptions, hence surfacing the subscriptions which I don't normally use but I am paying for.
* Also, it helps me keep a tab on how much I am spending by having an understanding of how much I wanted to spend 


Module 3
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